Friday, November 25, 2016

So I went through a bunch of junk in our house this week. Actually I cleared out a bunch in our kitchen cabinets and junk cabinets. I really wanted to get through our craft area too, but wasn't able to get it all done. But I did finally clear out some summer clothes, because the kids kept trying to wear them outside now that its too cold for them. That is a big deal with 4 kids...lol.

I took 8 bags to Goodwill, and still have a ton of sections to go.

I got a new play toy. It's been pretty handy. Going to be trying more and looking for more recipes to try and adjust some of our family favorites to this.

But onto our school work....

Each day we are watching the CNN Student News. I find the clips on Youtube. The kids enjoy it and it's definitely easier for the kids than watching the regular news. We have been doing this for a month now, and I think they are learning more about life around them.

We are spending time learning how we can improve ourselves, including building our relationship with God. So each day we spend time pondering on some sort of spiritual thought. This week we learning about things that should really be important in our lives.

In math, we did a bunch of review on reading thermometers and charts/graphs in math this week. The big thing was remembering how to read a plain thermometer.

We also worked on Measurement review. We made a poster to hang up with reminders for while we are cooking.

In History we learned about the origin of America the Beautiful and the building of the Transcontinental Railroad. Our history unit study introduced us to the Harvey Girls and the first restaurant chain opened by Fred Harvey. After reading about his business ventures, we watched the Judy Garland movie, The Harvey Girls. The kids thought it was funny in spots, and Lydia thought it was cool she saw Dorothy. But the boys overall attitude was it was boring.

In science we started with Geology. I couldn't find a program that I really liked on short notice, so I am adjusting a book that I already have. We are discussing both the secular view and compare it to our Christian views and talking about the differences. I am loosely using the Geology book from Intelligo Unit Studies. This week we started with "What is Geology?, Who studies Geology?, and also the Layers of the Earth review.

Geography this week we worked more on countries in the United Kingdom. We "visited" Wales. We had Welsh Rarebit and tea cakes for our international meal from there.

For Scotland, I made Scottish meat pie....this was a HUGE hit!

We went with daddy to the zoo and rode their winter rides.....the ice slide and bumper cars. They all had fun with that!

Caty made her Raddish Kids meal one evening. It was stuffing cups and mashed potatoes. Joe said it was excellent. It smelled amazing.

We had some friends over Friday afternoon to watch movies and play. The girls colored these cool pillows I found. They really liked them.

We had a busy week, and we were able to finish all of our schoolwork on the lesson plan. I was pretty happy. It's a sign of success. I have been working hard to not over-schedule our schoolwork. We all have our limits. Plus we need a little down week between the busy, busy weeks. Next week will be a VERY busy week!